More evidence as to why Israel needs a two-party, winner-takes-all political system like ours instead of the coalition government of one-issue minor parties forced on them by adopting the English Parliamentary system.
Israel is — politically — extremely weak. I suspect that one of these days, in a crisis, the military will take over, more in sorrow than in anger of course, and that will be the end of the Knesset and civil government until a new Constitution is written that provides more stability and rids the country of the theocratic bullshit that impedes it (and encourages the rise of tiny religious parties, which are the absolute worst). The sad thing is that this is possibly the best thing that could happen to Israel right now, second only to a Government of National Unity with a mandate to govern until the crisis is past regardless of who resigns from it in a hissy fit. The Army is a wonderful tool, but when wielded by revolving-door governments, it’s not very useful at all. Armies depend on political stability behind them in order to do their jobs, and when they don’t get political stability, they don’t know what’s going to hit them next. This tends to engender sentiment for military coupmanship, with all that entails.
(Please don’t react to the above by telling me I’m not much of a Zionist because I don’t believe in Israel’s future — you’re right. I’m not a Zionist, and I don’t have much faith in Israel’s future. Judaism is time-based, not place-based. Jews don’t need the Temple Mount, or for that matter, any part of the Holy Land, to worship God. (And FWIW, “God” is not His Name, so I see no reason to use the “G-d” circumlocution in English, no matter how much of a Conservative Jew I am.) What Jews need is to wake up, smell the coffee, and quit letting themselves be led like sheep to the slaughter. That means they need to embrace things like gun ownership, military service in the countries in which they live (instead of military service in Israel), and a general “connectedness” with society instead of hiding behind religious laws and customs that were designed to minimize contact with the goyim.
Zionism to me is nothing more and nothing less a Great Escape from engagement with the rest of the world in the manner of those contact-minimizing laws and customs. Sure, let’s all run off to Israel and live in a state that is organized on Jewish principles, and ignore the rest of the world. It’ll make us easier to target next time.
I have friends who believe that making Aliyah is the most wonderful thing an American Jew can do. I guess if you like the idea of living in the middle of a war zone surrounded by 200 million kill-crazy Arabs, that makes a great deal of sense. But only in a very warped way.)
A "surly curmudgeon[], suspicious and lacking in altruism." (Robert A. Heinlein)